About the artist:
Working in a variety of media, mainly pencil, paint, and print, my art often features simple scenes of everyday life. Some pieces start life captured in sketchbooks, others are committed to memory and embellished with my imagination.
I was born and currently live in N. Ireland, where I successfully completed a Foundation Studies Diploma in Art and Design with Commendation from The University of Ulster. But then I decided to follow my other love, languages, and after a degree in French and Spanish, I eventually ended up in Chile where I met my husband, started raising a family, and called it home for almost a decade.
This has arguably fostered a search for identity, belonging, and a sense of place, becoming recurring personal themes, while a strong narrative element underpins much of my artwork.
I favour working in several media, finding this fosters creativity. Often, I recycle artwork, making hand-cut paper stencils from unsuccessful watercolours or collagraph prints, using them to make monoprints for instance. For me, experimentation is a key part of my working practice, where I can explore and re-explore themes, as well as media, in order to deepen and improve my own understanding of what I am trying to say visually.
Since turning professional in 2012, I exhibit regularly in several galleries in Northern Ireland and am a recent Past President of the Ulster Society of Women Artists, winning the Lily Davies New Member Award in 2016 with “High Tea,” and The Founder’s Trophy in 2022 for my piece “Like A thief In The Night.” I was a Silver status member and regular exhibitor with the UKCPS, (United Kingdom Coloured Pencil Society) for many years after joining in 2014, but now I’m part of an art collective closer to home, called County Antrim Open Studios, or CAOS, for short. We aim to support each other as local artists and crafters and have occasional open studio trails or exhibitions and welcome visitors to our workspaces to meet the makers behind the work.
Other noteworthy shows to date include the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition, the Society of Women Artists, and the Open Exhibition of The Royal Institute for Painters in Watercolour, all in The Mall Galleries, London, as well as several years with the Royal Watercolour Society’s CWC, and the Royal Ulster Academy’s 2022, 2018 and 2014 annual exhibitions in Belfast, (shortlisted 2015 and 2016). My work has been sold to private collectors worldwide.
As well as my home studio, you can also find my work in DogHouse Gallery, Comber, YardGallery, Holywood, Gallery 545, Belfast, and recently, The BoatHouse Gallery, in Carpark 3 at The Giants’ Causeway near Bushmills. We are a gallery run by 4 local creatives working in different media, with one of us there every day, Monday to Saturday, 11am to 4pm. I am there on Thursdays, and we do Saturdays on rotation.
Enquiries:
Viewing by appointment is welcome in my home studio, The BlackSheep Gallery, which I share with my husband Hernán Farías, of HFPhotography. We sometimes offer workshops, special exhibitions and other events throughout the year, as well as having a small collection of other Irish art for sale. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram to keep up to date with what’s on.
My online shop offers limited-edition handmade prints, painted stones, giclée prints and cards, and occasionally it has smaller original paintings, too. I also have an Etsy shop where I have successfully sold to buyers worldwide for the last 10 years.
To arrange a viewing, request a price on an available work in the portfolio, or information regarding the galleries that regularly exhibit my art, please contact me directly via the Contact page, or see Galleries.
Please do NOT use any of the images here under any circumstances, without my prior consent and knowledge. All of my work is copyright protected.